Rockets lean on defense to hold off Thunder

HOUSTON (Ticker) -- When their offense failed them, the Houston
Rockets stepped things up defensively to earn their third
straight win to start the season.

Shooting poorly from the floor, the Rockets hunkered down,
opened the fourth quarter with a 12-2 run and beat the Oklahoma
City Thunder, 89-77, at Toyota Center on Saturday night.

Tracy McGrady scored 22 points and was one of six players
players to reach double digits in scoring for Houston, which
helped its cause by making 27 of its 31 free-throw attempts.

"(Keeping up the intensity when we struggle is) really not hard
because we really strive in this locker room on greatness,"
McGrady said. "That's why we have to come out tonight. Tonight
was one of those nights where we couldn't find the rhythm. It
was another game. We found a way to push ourselves through it
and get a comfortable lead we needed."

Yao Ming collected 16 points and 11 rebounds and Carl Landry
added 14 and 11 for the Rockets, who have won six straight at
home dating to last March 24.

"This game was very similar to the home opener against Memphis,"
Yao said. "For whatever reason, we were not making shots and we
struggled on defense. We let them (Thunder) come back and we
were not really focused out there. In the fourth quarter, I
think everybody realized that, if we don't pick it up right now,
then the game will slip away from us."

The Thunder remained winless since moving from Seattle during
the offseason.

Kevin Durant led all scorers Saturday with 26 points on 11-of-20
shooting. Johan Petro and Jeff Green were the only other
Thunder players to reach double digits in scoring, with 10
points each.

"There were a lot of good things but we couldn't make our
shots," Thunder head coach P.J. Carlesimo said. "They are too
good of a team and they really hurt us defensively. We had a
lot of open looks but we didn't make our shots. Their bigs did
a really good job.

"Landry gave them a boost and really hurt us on the boards. We
played enough to win but not against a team as good as Houston -
in Houston."

Durant scored 22 points in the first 29 minutes of the game and
the Thunder got within two, 53-51, on Petro's dunk with 6:27
left in the third quarter.

But the Rockets outscored the Thunder, 12-4, over the next
four-plus minutes to take a 65-55 lead with 1:38 left in the
quarter.

After the Thunder scored the last four points of the third,
Houston took control of the game early in the fourth and
seemingly cruised to their eighth straight win over the team
formerly known as the Seattle SuperSonics - a franchise that has
not won against Houston since April 4, 2006.

Houston shot a lousy 33 percent from the floor in the first half
- en route to 35 percent for the game - but still took a 42-41
lead into the break thanks to a 15-foot bank shot by Scola with
1.3 seconds left in the half.

The Rockets took their biggest lead of the half with 5:28 left
in the second when Artest hit a 3-pointer to make it 34-24.

"I thought that we didn't play very smart offensively, " Rockets
head coach Rick Adelman said. "We turned it over too many times
and in the first half it just seemed like we were content to
take the first option and force the play if it wasn't there and
not move the ball. We had three or four spurts during the
course of the game, and as soon as we had a spurt we let them
come right back at us."

But the Thunder, who called a timeout before Artest's shot,
responded with a 17-6 run to take their first lead of the game
when Green put home a monster dunk with 47 seconds left in the
half.

Durant, a University of Texas product, scored nine points during
the run as Oklahoma City shut down the Rockets' attack by
forcing eight turnovers in the opening 24 minutes.

"We played hard and our defense was good, but we needed to make
more shots," Durant said. "We tried to double down on Yao as
much as we could and it led to some steals."